Toys - Little People, VW Bus MicroMachine, Troll, Doozers, R2D2, Dala Horse, Nom, Owl, Alien

These toys are going with me to Belgium. I call them my cheerleading squad. They sit on the shelf above my desk and cheer me on. I didn’t expect the reaction to the bus toys I posted yesterday. I wanted to clarify that those are not my entire VW bus stuff collection, nor even a small part of it. It’s just the cheap plastic buses that have broken doors, or crazy paint jobs. I even have duplicates of some of them. I’m absolutely keeping my special VW buses – ones that were a special gift, or are unique, or fancy, or just something I really like.

Do you have an icon?  You know that single thing that when people see it, they think of you? It’s VW buses for me. It’s frogs for Thomas. We both have a ton – more than we can display in our house without looking like obsessed freaks. :) And many of the things are great and I love them, because buses make me happy.  But some of these, like these plastic buses that don’t do anything, and I don’t remember where they came from, sit in a box in the back of the closet.  I don’t display them because then my really cool collection becomes a cluttered mess.  Anyway, I just wanted to explain that I’m not giving away my collection, I’m emphasizing the special.

Besides, my kids are probably going to hate VW buses.  Isn’t it the rule that your kids never think your taste is cool?

These are a few of my toy VW buses.  Actually, these are some of the ones that didn’t make the cut in down-sizing, so I was photographing them before they find a new home.

Toy VW Buses

But when I looked at the photo, it reminded me of this…

Carabus on the Blue Ridge Parkway

and this…

Carabus on the Blue Ridge Parkway

Aww, happy memories.  These shots are from 2003, when Thomas and I joined about 75 other VW Buses on a drive on the Blue Ridge Parkway.  The carabus (what VW Bus drivers call caravans) is an annual event following the High Country Bus Festival in Boone, NC.

My friend and I are taking a t-shirt quilt class later this Summer, and I’ve been setting aside some of my favorite VW Bus shirts for it.  I’m trying to decide what fabrics to choose for the back and border around the shirts.

Any suggestions? I think I’d like to stay with a blue color scheme, like my bus. The batik-y looking print under the shirts is my current thought on backing – kind of like tie-dye. And I also have a bunch of Heather Ross’ pink and blue bus fabric, but that just doesn’t seem to match the shirt colors as well.

Also, have you made a t-shirt quilt before? I’d love to see your design.

Curious Bird‘s Color Week finishes up with blue. This is my 1971 VW Bus – it fades from light blue to dark blue. It was originally going to be sky blue with clouds fading into navy blue with stars, but I never got past the fade – long story. You can see more photos of my bus and it’s various paint jobs in this old post.

• Faces of the Bus

Just to finish up, Thanks Curious Bird!  I had a great time participating, and even more, I enjoyed meeting some great new bloggers.

Just after Thomas proposed two years ago, he bought a motorcycle. I’ll admit, I’m not a fan, but atleast he’s gone to all lengths to put safety first. He rides it to work, about an hour each way, every day, even in the cold or wet weather. Since he hardly ever drives his car anymore, he decided to go ahead and sell it, rather than have it depreciate in our driveway.

He got the car right before we left Indiana. We were living in a tiny town where Thomas could walk to work, restaurants, and stores, so he didn’t need a car. But when we moved to Atlanta, he quickly purchased a Nissan Maxima to get around our new spread out city.

The Nissan was a good car, but it just didn’t fit Thomas’ personality. It was big, with gold trim, and he’s an Earth-friendly, little car kind of guy. Recently, I asked him why he picked that car and he explained that he had grand ideas of taking his new Atlanta coworkers to lunch in a cushy famly car. Huh?  That doesn’t sound like Thomas…  And the work lunches didn’t really work out – first he worked at a job where he mostly worked from home, and now he’s at a place where they provide free fancy meals at their office everyday.

Anyway, this morning, Thomas sold his car through Craigslist. We’ll still have 2 cars (Honda and bus), 3 bikes (his recumbant is for sale too), and 3 kayaks (one is Dad’s). That should be enough for us to get around for a while, or atleast until we have kids. At that point, I’ll probably pass on my Honda to Thomas, and get a new (used) 4-door car for me. By the way, I recently realized that kids in carseats can’t ride in VW Buses – no back seatbelts. I wonder if we’ll have to give up bus camping for a while when we get to that point.

So what do you get around in?

Okay, this is the last milestone post, at least for a couple of weeks. :) Two years ago today, Thomas proposed to me. I’ve got the original blog entry, and photo of the handmade ring Thomas made for me on my site.

• The Original Proposal Blog Entry (his version of the story is linked at the bottom)

There are two items that I forgot to include in that post:

First, I had suspected that we were getting close to getting engaged, so I was being an obnoxious girlfriend and suspecting that every fancy dinner or holiday was going to be *it*. I kept getting disappointed when it wasn’t *it*, so when he didn’t propose on our three year anniversary (the day before), I got pretty grumpy. What I didn’t know is that he had planned to, but because I was being a grump, I didn’t want to go for a drive in the VW Bus, which is what he was waiting for to propose. Oops.

Also, when Thomas proposed, he showed the weirdest nervous behavior. His eyebrows started spasming – rapidly twitching up and down. I’ve never seen him do it again, but they wouldn’t stop moving. It was really weird, but kind of cute too. :)

The photo in this entry was one of our engagement photos.

The odometer on the bus flipped over to zero on our way to SC this past weekend. It was a very exciting stretch of empty road and we counted out the numbers as they got closer. Thomas snapped the photos while I drove.

To be fair, I think my bus has had at least 3 odometers, and when this one was installed, it was used and not at zero. Actually, I’ve had the bus for 11 years, but I doubt even in that time that I could have driven it 99,999 miles.

Thomas posted his photos from the VW Bus Campout – he got some great shots. Be sure to check them out:

• Thomas’ Paddy’s Wagens 2008 (69 photos)